In histopathology laboratories, specimens that have been prepared from patient tests and mounted on microscope slides must be sorted into slide holders (or folders) for viewing by various pathologists who work in the laboratory. A folder typically includes multiple slide locations and thus holds multiple slides. A folder can be filled with a desired combination of slides, e.g., for a particular patient, for a particular pathologist who is assigned to view the slides, and/or on the type of samples on the slides. Slide sorting is one of the time consuming and manual tasks in histopathology laboratories, and is not easily automated. In addition to manually organizing slides into folders, descriptive reports are often required to be included prior to distribution to a pathologist for diagnosis. Slide sorting and the generation of descriptive reports is a major bottleneck in histopathology laboratory workflows.
Fully automated slide sorting systems in which robots sort the slides and place them into folders present challenges. For example, there is a high cost of replacing a slide that is damaged during the automated handling process. In many cases, replacing a slide is impossible, since the original patient sample is depleted and obtaining another sample requires surgery or other invasive procedures on the patient. Hence, a fully automated sorting system has not found widespread acceptance.